Everywhere you turn, people are talking about content. But let’s face it, there’s just so much written content on screen you can read before your eyeballs drop out of their sockets and bounce off the keyboard.
Enter the infographic, the most revolutionary content innovation we’ve seen since the advent of the LOL Cat video (and slightly more useful to society) and one that represents a fundamental shift in online content marketing. For those of you still unsure what exactly an infographic is or does, it’s simple. An infographic is a visual representation of information, data or knowledge. And what’s great about them is an infographic can represent complex ideas and information beautifully and easily, which means it’s easier to interpret and understand. We also call this data visualisation, visualisation or visual journalism – that is, an alternative to words to tell an important story using facts and data in a way that people enjoy and understand quickly.
How do you make an infographic?
An infographic is born out of the collaboration between an illustrator and a researcher. The researcher takes the data and facts and draws out the narrative – the story the data is supposed to tell. The illustrator then brings that narrative alive. The creative process involved in making an infographic is pretty exciting – and pairing together researchers (often journalists) with designers and illustrators is a relatively new collaboration, because the image created doesn’t just accompany the story – it is the story!
Why infographics are here to stay
Because people love them. They enable people to grasp complex and in-depth information quickly and easily and enable the data to play a starring role. People are able to grasp ideas quickly that used to take 1000 words of copy. Who even reads and absorbs 1000 words of copy these days? In this competitive world of online content and shrinking concentration spans, the infographic is thing that catches users’ attention and doesn’t take up too much thinking time to understand – it’s the content format so beautifully suited to the times!
Data is everywhere
Today you can get a metric for just about anything. Data is everywhere – we’re saturated in it. We can monitor just about everything and see relationships and correlations between sets of data. The relationship between cause and effect is all around us. With all this data at our disposal, we need a way to make the best use of it – help people understand its meaning. Infographics are the perfect tool to enable people – and not just ‘numbers’ people – to interpret data.
People love sharing infographics
Especially in Australia. In fact, according to Google Insights, Australia is the sixth highest country in the world to search for infographics. When Mashable (the online magazine focused on digital and tech), looked at its metrics, it noticed an estimated 5% of its content was in Infographics. Of the top 25 posts on Mashable which have gone most viral (in terms of Facebook likes, Tweets and Google +), there were three infographics and two videos on the list. This shows that infographics are more likely to be shared compared to normal “blog” news from Mashable. Not bad for a content form that wasn’t even around in 2009!
Infographics should be a part of your content marketing strategy
Because we’re willing to bet, that out of all the content you have on your site, it’s the infographic that people will respond to and share.
Let’s face it, we get exhausted by all those words on the screen, and often video can be one of two things – cost prohibitive or woefully amateurish. The infographic is the perfect solution – the ideal content format for these days of information overload and time-poor users. And another thing – they’re sexy, cool, colourful and truly creative – no matter how dry your data or how dull your subject matter might be (make that used to be!)
The infographic may be the content breakthrough you’ve been waiting for, and is fast becoming an essential (and beautiful) part of an effective content strategy in an extremely crowded marketplace.
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